Okay, so a lot of you have been asking how I transformed myself in 6 weeks. Well, it wasn’t easy, as a matter of fact it was probably one of the hardest things I’ve done. It took a lot of discipline, dieting, and working out almost 5-6 times a week. I’ll first start off with the diet, then the workouts….

Diet-
All of hear about diets and that you should watch this, watch that, cut carbs here, eat fiber, eat whole foods, watch your caloires, etc. Well the only way I knew that I was going to get quick results was to do a bodybuilder style diet. This diet is actually extremely bad for you, and I would not suggest doing this for a long periods of time, if at all. The way I did my dieting was to watch the macronutrients. Those would be your Protein, Carbohydrate, and Fat grams. These three macros are what make up your calorie count. Instead of just watching my calories (big picture) I watched the macros that I took in each day to ensure weight loss/fat loss while working out. The way I did this was to take an average of a 10 day calorie log, and then divide the average among the three macros (Protein = 4 calories, Carbs = 4 calories, fat = 9 calories). I ensured that I was intaking more protein than anything else, so my starting out numbers were 140 Protein grams, 90 Carbs, and 25 Fat. For three weeks I made sure that I ate food, and drank protein drinks that did go over these numbers, and I ate on a regular bases by eating 5-6 times a day!

Now the food part was pretty easy. I ate a lot of food that was low in carbs and fats during the day at work, and then I fed my body the carbs and fats it needed after my workouts. So I ate everything from chicken, egg whites (egg whites have 4 grams of pro, 0 carb, 0 fat), fish, shrimp, broccoli, carb master yogurt from Kroger, baby spinach, vegetables, no salad dressings, no butter only parkay spray butter, and so on (I think you get the picture). I used sites that had low fat recipes such as diabetic site, which has great recipes, and I just found new ways to spice up food at home. Another thing I did was stop going out to eat and bought all my food. Lastly, NO POP, NO JUICES, and ABSOLUTELY NO DRINKING! I drank majority of water which actually staives off hunger and feeds your body nutrients. So basically for three weeks my numbers were as described. The 4th and 5th week, my numbers dropped to 140/80/20. This was so that my body would start the lean out process even more. I still jotted down everyday my macro intake, and made sure I wasn’t going over my numbers. During these two weeks, I started to write down how much sodium I was intaking per day as well.

Now the reason why I kept track of the sodium intake was because during the last 6 days of the 6 week fitness challenge I was in, I did a sodium depletion as well as dropping my macro numbers again. 3 days before I started droping my sodium, I started drinking 2 gallons of water everyday. Once the sodium depletion started, my macro numbers were at 135/70/20…now this was extremely difficult. Not only did I have to eat low fat and carb foods, but I also had to eat low sodium, especially since my sodium levels went down by about 250mg a day. During this I drank 2 gallons of water for the first 3 days, and then 1.75 gallons the rest of the time. This was so that it would flush out more sodium, but also to protect my kidneys during this time. Lets just say, wheat tortillas, tuna, lite miracle whip, and other ingredents to make tuna salad was a savor, along with yogurt and sugar free jelly.

Now that was pretty much a summary of my diet during that time. The workout part was definitely the focus. My workouts were very intense, hard, and it got harder as the competition went on. The first two weeks, I really concentrated on toning and getting my muscles ready for the next 4 weeks. THe first two weeks involved very long cardio sessions, with short intense isolation lifts. All throughout the competition I did HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) sessions. This involved riding a bike for 10 minutes, pedaling light for 45 seconds at a high resistance, to droping the resistance down about three notches and pedaling as hard and as fast as I could for 15 seconds. Then I would walk on an inlcine on the treadmill for 35-40 minutes, or I would lightly row for 10 minutes, then got back on the bike and did the same thing as the first time. If you want to know more about this let me know and I can give you an in depth explanation of the idea behind HIIT. During lifting I concentrated on different areas of the body on different days. I did about 3-4 exercises per body area, and then did a 7 set, and rested 30 seconds between each set on the 7 set exercise. This is known as FST-7 (www.FST-7.com < --sorry the link button is not working for some reason). So after the first two weeks, I measured my body fat....let me tell you, I was behind on where I needed to be. So I increased the workouts, and made the cardio more challenging. During the rest of the time of the competition, I lifted heavy weight, and then fluctated with lighter weight. But something I always did was to esnure that my reps were between 8-12. However in the very last week when I was doing a sodium depletion, I only did cardio, because during that time, your body becomes very week, and you can hardly lift like you were just a week ago.

(Now of course I’m summarizing my workouts because I don’t have thatmany characters to write out my entire program…butif you have a lifting schedule and you think it it helping you build muscle and lose weight, definitely keep doing it…but if you need some help, let me know and I can definitely give you advice, and even for a small fee I could train you as a workout partner.)

Here is how I did my workout splits:
Day1: Chest
Day2: Arms – bicep and tricep
Day3: Personal Trainer day – Core, then I did a workout on my own doing shoulders
Day4:Back
Day5: Rest
Day6: Cardio/lifts I didn’t do during the week
Day7: Rest

During the first 4 weeks, I was doing abs every other day, and doing cardio everyday. Then in the last 2 weeks I was doing abs everyday and cardio everyday with my lifting.

Now of course lifting is going to help build muscle and get you stronger, but what really leans you out and makes you looked ripped is Dieting. My whole transformation was 70% diet, and 30% working out. Now for the look I want, which is lean and thin with great muscle definition, I did cardio a ton. That was pretty much hand and hand with my dieting. Now if you want a bigger look, don’t do as much cardio. Cardio will lean you out, and it is the 2 most important thing to do if you want a 6 pack. The number one factor in a six pack is dieting, not doing a million crunches!

So yea, basically in the shortest summary I could, that is how I look like I am now. Since the competition, I have gone to a more healthy calorie level, but I’m still going to be losing weight because I am going to be intaking a calorie count 500 or so calories less than my DCML (Daily Calorie Maintenance Level). I feel great, look great, and I did it naturally with no fat burners, no gimics…just eating right and just worked hard in the gym.